


shallow is as shallow does

by greymon



Series: shallow is as shallow does [1]
Category: Professional Wrestling, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: M/M, kayfabe-compliant, talky boys, wow how do i even BEGIN to tag this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-13
Updated: 2014-11-13
Packaged: 2018-02-25 05:57:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2610920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greymon/pseuds/greymon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something in his face tightens, and Seth wouldn't have seen it if he hadn't been watching him so closely. "Just some ornery jackass, you know. Ripped jeans, sneakers held together with duct tape. Carton of cheap cigarettes in my pocket."</p><p>Seth knows, remotely, that Dean is Telling Him A Story. He knows how Dean gets, knows that for all he's a genius, his thoughts don't always come out of his head in the right order, and he'll think and write and practice until he's sure the crux of his point swings exactly how he wants it to. And he can feel himself letting Dean take him along like the gravity pulling at his toes.</p><p>He doesn't bother fighting it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	shallow is as shallow does

**Author's Note:**

> this one is hard to find words for that aren't just, _dean and seth talk about a thing_. maybe it's a character exploration? but regardless, it took a lot out of me to write, and i'm actually pretty pleased with the result. give it a chance, maybe?
> 
> with love to @heyspibsy for beta-reading for me, and both them and @hellonik for being endless sources of encouragement while i wrote this. ♥ y'all are my dream team.
> 
> ([a song](http://listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=e3ZKOgdYIP8#Remedios_-_Last_Train_Home_~_Still_Far)) ([a picture](http://cdn.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I00009XM7V518aSc/s/750/750/Dayton-skyline-on-snowy-night.jpg))  
> [here's the fic on tumblr](http://disturbancedive.tumblr.com/post/102527467791/shallow-is-as-shallow-does-dean-seth), if you're into that. [smooch]
> 
>  **NOTE:** i've switched this work from being multichaptered to being part of a series! a second part will still go up, but it will be separated from this. :) thanks!

Seth doesn’t tell anyone where he’s going. He has no excuse prepared but thankfully doesn’t see any other performers on his walk to the elevator, a small miracle considering his position next to the ice machine. As the doors drag to a close in front of him, the elevator starting to make its slow way up, it hits him distantly how strange that is.

The man of a million excuses, a story for everything, a pile of stacked cards like a loaded gun - and he has no idea what he’d say if he saw anyone right now.

He runs a hand through his hair, watching the elevator lights go on, floor after floor. It’s taking too long, so he pulls his hair out of its bun, twists it automatically behind his ear and over one shoulder. He spends the next sixty seconds snapping his hair tie against his wrist, slipping out the doors with his head down once they finally open on the top floor of the hotel.

The stairs are simple enough to find from there - Seth follows the little plaques that read _roof access_ and makes quick work of the distance. He checks around him only once, hand on the door handle, but the hallway is empty and he disappears into the stairwell.

The chill hits him immediately, even through the cement walls of the stairwell, and of _course_ , somehow he’d forgotten that it was winter in Ohio and the sun wasn’t up anymore.

Seth folds his arms and treks up the stairs. Ordinarily he might run, especially since he’s not carrying anything, but - this isn’t that type of nervous energy. He takes the stairs almost methodically, one at a time, trying to regulate his shallow breathing. He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him, only that he feels like his skin is slipping off him, his throat closed around any breath he tries to take.

When he reaches the top he waits a few seconds, right hand poised in front of the industrial handgrip. As gingerly as he’s ever done anything, he reaches his left hand up toward his chest and breathes.

His heart is definitely beating. It unnerves him, feels too close to the surface of his skin, feels like it’s about to drop out from under his coat. 

He puts his hand down and pushes through the door to an unforgiving whip of cold wind - almost all at once he feels a little better, outside air rushing into his lungs in the way nothing in the hotel had. Seth isn’t really sure what he’d originally planned to do after that initial shock, but he doesn’t even make it all the way through a cursory glance around before his plans become irrevocably changed.

Something squeezes at his heart - but unlike anything he’d been feeling earlier, this, at least, he can quantify for himself: being protective of Dean Ambrose has always just been something that seemed to come naturally to him, whether they were friends or not. 

It pisses him off, a little - the way he sees Dean’s back and becomes immediately afraid for him. 

Seth pieces together that he must be sitting on the edge of the roof with his feet hanging off and all he can think about is the time the three of them (because they’ve only ever had one group of three) had gone hiking in Colorado. Dean had been leading the pack until they’d reached a swinging bridge, when he had fallen abruptly silent.

( _“Yeah, it’s vertigo_ ,” he’d said later that night, in a shared hotel room miles away. He’d gestured with both hands, holding them up like opposing bridge rails, then swayed them slightly. “ _I’m not like, afraid of heights, really. I just gotta be in the middle of things or I freak out._ ”)

Seth remembers how he’d been shaking as he’d walked, though, and doesn’t doubt he is now, perched high above the city with nothing to catch him but the harsh chill of the season. It’s the only thing keeping him from just calling out to Dean from where he is, a wrangling unease in his throat of not wanting to know what would happen if Dean were to lose his balance.

He makes his slow way to Dean and stands slightly behind him, chin up toward the city but eyes peeking down - Dean doesn't look happy, but he doesn't exactly look like he's ready to let himself slip off the roof, either. There's a lit cigarette between his fingers and Seth aches.

"New boots?" Dean's voice is rough with exhaustion, and sharp. He hadn't even turned his head to look. Seth bites his lip, though, because - he's right. They are new, and warm where Seth knows Dean's ragged old shoes are thin and cold.

He puts his hands in his coat pockets and looks out. There's a body of water nearby that hasn't frozen over yet. Dean probably knows what it's called.

"Something you might want to consider someday," Seth says softly, no venom in it whatsoever.

"Maybe," Dean lies. He lifts the cigarette to his mouth and takes a drag - his feet look like they're kicking absently, but Seth would bet it's actually the wind brushing by them.

He doesn't say anything else - savoring the smoke in the cold, probably - so Seth looks away from him again, tries to catalogue the buildings above them that make up the Dayton skyline. The heady scent of tobacco floats up toward his face, then he hears Dean stub out the cigarette on the concrete next to him.

"Why don't you have a seat, Seth?" he asks, and it sounds like a joke. Dean tilts his head up, patting the roof next to his thigh with one bare palm. Seth doesn't want to, at all, would rather take Dean by his shoulders and pull him backwards until his whole body was on solid ground. He considers it, wonders if Dean would fight him or just go with him, let Seth calm him from the edge and rest his head on his thigh so Seth could pet through his hair.

He sits. After a few extra seconds, he gets his legs out in front of him and hangs his feet off the roof. It's a long fucking way down. Dean has to be freezing, but his body is radiating a kind of weight and warmth that Seth feels in his bones.

He glances to the smothered cigarette before he looks to Dean's face, and Dean seems to have noticed him doing it - as Seth watches, he makes a little gesture with it, then flings it forcibly to the street below.

Seth sniffs, still orienting himself to the wind as it climbs frigidly through his hair and dries out his eyes. He tracks the cigarette until he can't see it anymore. He wants to speak, has so much he could say to Dean now when it's dark as a void, the wind cocooning them from listening ears.

Predictably, Dean speaks first.

"You know somethin' I used to do when I was younger?" he asks, and his voice is still a grumbling growl out his throat. Seth misses him, fiercely, no matter that he's sitting right there. He doesn't look at Seth, just stares at the river and keeps going. "I'm talkin' maybe sixteen, seventeen."

Seth sighs and sees his breath in front of him for a split-second. "What?" he prompts, and Dean's head swivels so fast to look at him that Seth's stomach drops,  _don't fall don't fall_ , but he doesn't and he's actually kind of smiling, like Seth has done something right. His fingers, the ones that had been holding the cigarette before, are on Seth's knee now, and twitching with the cold.

"There were these train tracks by where I lived," Dean begins, turning to face the city again. Seth's spine goes cold under his coat - he thinks about the road he'd driven in on, thinks about the mileage between Dayton and Cincinnati. He wonders if Dean had seen the same road signs, wonders if he has sentiment attached to the word the way Seth would. Something about Dean, the way Seth knows how strong Dean is but also knows by name all the little parasites that will sink into his brain and rot, makes Seth want to always be near him, able to quietly tend to the garden in his mind even if Dean won't.

Dean sounds more subdued than usual, or maybe now Seth is just paying more attention, but the snow on the ground burrows him in even more deeply. "I used to follow 'em out to where they left the city, just on my feet."

Something in his face tightens, and Seth wouldn't have seen it if he hadn't been watching him so closely. "Just some ornery jackass, you know. Ripped jeans, sneakers held together with duct tape. Carton of cheap cigarettes in my pocket."

Seth knows, remotely, that Dean is Telling Him A Story. He knows how Dean gets, knows that for all he's a genius, his thoughts don't always come out of his head in the right order, and he'll think and write and practice until he's sure the crux of his point swings exactly how he wants it to. And he can feel himself letting Dean take him along like the gravity pulling at his toes.

He doesn't bother fighting it. Dean's thigh is so close to his.

"I'd finish school and head out that way, just walking from board to board and lookin' at the sky or the trees or just fuckin' nothing, if I was pissed off."

Seth can imagine Dean Ambrose, gangly, scrappy, wayward teenager - would probably be able to even if he hadn't heard a few of these stories before. Hell, if he'd believed everything Dean tries to tell him, he'd probably think that's still who Dean is.

"And I'd follow it, two miles, five miles, I'd just keep going until suddenly it elevated. Thinned out into one track and put way up on stilts over this wide-open lowland underneath. And I'd still follow it." He breathes in, and it sounds shallow. Seth wishes they were maybe less high up, less outside, wishes he could protect Dean's pale face from the cold. Wishes a lot of things. "I'd go slow, just step from one board to the next, until I got right about to the middle of where it first separated up and where it disappeared toward, I don't fuckin' know, Mason probably, got back on solid ground - and I'd stop there and just turn, a foot each on two boards, and I'd look out over the nothing. The wind was wild. Like, you wouldn't expect it to be. But it was."

When Dean turns back to Seth, Seth is staring right at him. He blinks and struggles to open his eyes again against the dry wind. Dean's hand tightens on his knee.

"You know what I'd do then?" he asks, and Seth tips his head forward, a little  _go on_ motion. Dean inhales through his nose.

"I'd sit down. Put my ass right to the steel and wood and dirt and sit there, right on the edge of the tracks, with my feet hangin' off." Seth feels something kick up inside him, a kind of tiny uproar behind his eyes and in the bridge of his nose, and he doesn't know why it's happening until Dean knocks his hanging foot against Seth's and says, as calmly as the rest of it, "I'd wait for a train to hit me."

Seth can't help himself, he reaches one of his hands toward his own chest. He feels faint, like he'd gotten the wind knocked out of him, and he thinks no eight words have ever shattered his heart in quite the way those ones just had. He realizes he's looked away from Dean and snaps his head back up to look at his eyes.

Dean looks... patient. His cold hand on Seth's knee slides up to his thigh and squeezes it. Seth leans into the touch a little bit, honestly concerned about how lightheaded he feels.

"I'd reach down into my pocket and grab my wasted little carton of smokes, pull one out, super not classy at all, and I'd stick it between my lips and light it, and as I was doin' it I'd tell myself:  _don't move from this spot till it's gone_. And man, I felt sick, you know? I'd look down and blow smoke and the whole time I'd think, if I hear a train whistle from over that way, it's gonna get here before I'm done and I'll be dead. I'd think about how there would be nowhere for me to go, and I'd just sit there. Sometimes I'd have to take the cig out 'cause my teeth were chattering too much, I was so scared. The whole time, really, I'd just stare down at my own feet like they weren't attached to me, checking how much of the paper was left and just waiting for that whistle to tell me whether or not I'd go home that night."

They both wince as the wind picks up for a few seconds, just one gust stronger than the others, but Seth can't take it anymore - he puts his palms to the concrete and shifts himself closer to Dean until their thighs are touching, the toe of his left boot loose against the side of Dean's right one. Dean backs up into it and moves his hand around from Seth's thigh to around his waist, palm against the roof on his other side, and he's almost holding him.

It's just - Seth even _knows_ the end of this story, doesn't he? Clearly Dean is sitting next to him, in the flesh, obviously he's survived to tell the tale, but it's as if - that doesn't even matter. It's not helping him relax at all. He breathes in, shaky, feels it coast against his chapped bottom lip. Dean is alive. Dean is alive, and he's here, and Seth fervently refuses to allow it to be any other way.

"And, you know. Wouldn't you know it. I always did. I'd finish my smoke and - like, once it was gone and there was still no whistle, I'd almost hesitate a little? Like I'd really take my time snubbing it out, like, burying it in the dirt and shit. I didn't even stand back up. I was literally just sitting there, giving the train an extra thirty seconds in case it decided to put me out of my misery. But it never did, and every time I'd stand back up, real slow since my legs were shaking, and I'd make my scuffy way back to the woods where I'd be able to step to one side if I heard a train comin'. Then back home - you know, if you could call it that."

Seth hums a little, in response to nothing in particular so much as just. Just everything. The air, the snow on the ground. Dean being here, Dean's forearm against his back, Dean telling him things in his gravelly hush that he doesn't tell people.

"But I'd be walkin' back, right, and as the adrenaline wore off I'd be smiling from ear to ear. I looked like a lunatic, probably, just grinnin' my face off in the middle of the woods. But there wasn't really anyone around to see me do it, anyway, and plus -  _I'd survived_. I'd gambled with death and won. And it wasn't the first time, either, I'd won _every single time_." Dean kind of snorts, like a sniff to the back of his throat. " 'Course, looking back on it, that was probably pretty stupid. The trains ran on a schedule, and if I'd survived it once I'd probably survive it every time, like clockwork. But back then? It was everything. I'd given the world its chance to wipe me off the face of the planet and there I was."

Seth nods absently, tracing the corner of a taller building with his eyes and just - trying to imagine living that way. Where - not only where every day could be your last, but where precisely every day at five o'clock you had a personal appointment with the grim reaper. He can't do it, but he tries.

"I used to take it as like, proof that I was alright. That I didn't deserve to die, you know?" Seth nods again, because - for some reason, that he  _does_ know. It makes perfect sense to him, that Dean would think that way.

Dean lets out a terse laugh through his teeth, and Seth sees the shots of breath in front of them, one-two-three and a wispier one where it'd trailed off.

"It was fucking  _dumb_."

It isn't what Seth expects. He feels the squeeze in his chest again and takes in a nervous breath - he thinks about how he'd found Dean, sitting on the edge of something with a cigarette in his hand, and - his thoughts move so fast through his cold skull that they ache, and when he pulls his head back a little to stare at Dean, Dean is staring right back.

"Don't you think?" he asks. "Don't you think it was dumb?"

"Um," Seth starts, and he clears his throat. "That what was dumb?"

"That I thought that was what mattered. That I thought I had the system figured out, like I was playing everyone."

Seth knows he's squinting because the muscles next to his eyes feel sore in the night air. "Oh. Um. I... guess?" He searches Dean's face for any kind of clue of where he's going with this, but finds the same sort of tired smile on his face he's had ghosting on his face this whole time.

"Yeah," Dean says, and Seth wonders if they're just gonna leave it at that and look at the street some more, if this was a kind of movie magic non-sequitor to transition them back into normal life.

He should've known better.

"I think it's pretty dumb." And Dean's voice sounds - it's still patient, still not really emotional, but it sounds  _sharper_ again, and it makes Seth feel like he has to back away from him, like they're not allowed to be touching each other. "That's why I told you that whole story, you know. Because I just - I wanted you to know what I thought."

Seth is still winded and he feels Dean's arm tense behind him, god, he's  _confused_ \- "Still think, really. Of your behavior, of all this murdering and cheating your way up the ladder, pretending you like to be laughed at. I think it's dumb."

For a brief second, the bottom drops out of Seth's stomach and he is absolutely convinced that he is going to be pushed off a roof.

When he swallows it's convulsive, panic having struck through his throat like a wildfire, burning even when he blinks, sees the look in Dean's eyes and knows he isn't about to eat pavement.

"O - oh," squeaks its way out of his throat, and he doesn't know how to categorize what he's feeling, everything just feels like a jumble inside him, he feels like he's sitting on his skull and he's got lungs for eyes, his veins and arteries all tangled up together like the cords in his surge protector at home.

He tries to scoot away from Dean, even a little bit, but Dean's hand shifts up from the roof to Seth's waist and he stops moving altogether. He possibly stops breathing.

Dean's fingers dig into his coat a little, bare fingertips against his stomach.

"Sssh," is all he says, like he'd sensed Seth's deer-in-headlights-panic and in fact would rather he didn't fall. "It's okay, I wasn't done."

Seth bites his bottom lip, scrapes at the dry skin with his top row of teeth.

"I just - I mean. I do think it's dumb, that part was true, but it's not important to me right now. Because I think you know it's dumb, too."

"Yeah," Seth breathes. Dean squeezes him a little more tightly and he huddles toward his side.

"Yeah. So what I really - wanted to ask, was. Why you're doing it, I guess. We both know it's stupid, and - trust me, it's not like I can't understand the compulsion, but, Seth, you're so much smarter than I ever was. That's why I don't get it. You're better than some bitchy sixteen-year-old with mommy issues. So - why?"

Seth could just give him a straight answer.

"Is that what you were thinking about before I came up here? Did I just... wander into your life at the wrong time?"

"It's what I spend most of my time thinking about, honestly." Dean sounds wistful, but not particularly upset. Or surprised. "I'll let the second question go without comment."

Seth finds he's settled back against Dean's side again - nothing drastic, nothing that could be - misconstrued, probably, but. Something. He breathes slowly through his nose before he speaks again. "It really meant that much to you?"

Dean makes a sound, a cross between a hunching, thin breath and a laugh. "Every time we do somethin' like this I think maybe you'll be done just asking the same questions, but I guess not." Seth feels the hand on his waist travel up his back, over his far shoulder, and feels the delicate twirl of one finger in his hair before -

Dean pulls a scrap of hair behind his ear.

Seth isn't sure why, but his face goes warm. Something about it is - intimate, in a kind of eerie, reflexive way. It's familiar and somehow not at all. He looks down at the street, catches sight of their four feet hanging above it all. He remembers Dean's words about  _stare down at my feet like they weren't attached to me_ and lets the thought sit. He thinks he might understand, he feels like his heart has fallen out of his coat after all, sitting in his lap, and he's staring at it like it's someone else's. _  
_

"Guess not," he parrots.

Weirdly enough, Dean doesn't push it. He purses his lips and Seth thinks he's about to be lectured, but all he says is, "You're a good guy, Seth," in a way that feels like a benediction or a confession and could be either one. Seth wonders if he's embarrassed, even, because he's quick to speak up again. "It's cold as dicks out here."

Seth sniffs and makes a face at how wet it sounds. "Gross. Yeah." He quiets down when he feels the very edges of Dean's fingernails crossing over the skin at the back of his neck, under his hair.

"I'm gonna go back inside," he murmurs, giving Seth - it's a look that he can only describe as _coquettish_ , all baby blue eyes and dimples under his hair. Seth snorts, and that turns Dean's smile into a real one. He scoots back, off the ledge and back onto the roof proper, folds his legs in. "I'm thinking you should probably come with me."

And really, Seth has no reason to stay outside anymore - everything he'd felt crawling through him a couple hours ago is gone, and something about the way Dean is looking at him is making his heart feel secure in his chest again, no matter that Dean's words are still harsh in his mind.

It takes them a couple minutes to stand up, Dean's knees almost giving out from under him and Seth almost toppling when he feels the consequential grip on his shoulder, and they're both laughing and the wind is laughing and Seth is about ready to thank a God he doesn't believe in that they're so close to the stairwell because he feels like his blood has frozen over.

They make the short trek holding one another, and Seth is too - too everything, to think about anything but how solid and familiar and real Dean feels under his arm.

"Guess what," he says. It's really tripped out of his mouth without his thinking it through, but now Dean is looking at him expectantly.

"What?" he asks, low and a little nasal.

Seth feels a sharp jab to his chest like he's about to say something horrendously stupid,  _never mind_ on the tip of his tongue.

"You survived," he offers like a whisper. They keep walking and Dean is quiet for so long (the longest string of seconds Seth has possibly ever experienced and every single one of them drops into his stomach) that Seth is about to tell him to just ignore it, he's exhausted, then he feels Dean's arm tighten around his waist.

"Huh," is all Dean says, and when Seth anxiously looks to his face, he looks amused and deep, deep in thought. "What do you know. So I did." Something in his tone warms Seth up right from the gut, like he's been allowed access to a part of Dean he hasn't been since June. Maybe even before.

He knows this isn't over, between them. He knows that for all Dean will let him hold the door open for him and joke about pushing him down the stairs, give him a pat on the ass back into the hotel, he still owes Dean some answers. A lot of answers, if he's being honest. He knows it's only a matter of time, and that if the way Dean is talking to him is any indication, that's not a very well-kept secret.

Dean knows him, and he might even go as far to say he knows Dean. And that - who they are - what they'd been on the roof, so, who they are - is okay. And, for now, that's okay.


End file.
